This is a recent exchange that was initiated by a creationist chap, named Andrew Sandstrom, who took exception to an old Blog posting I wrote about Sarah Palin and the Republican Expelled Creationist gang. If you have followed my writings you know I wasn’t particularly receptive to the Republican’s fundamentalist religious preoccupation as cynically perpetrated by Karl Rove. Here is Andrew’s reply to me:
Intelligent Design is very limited when it comes to a creationist point of view. It’s assuming that the earth is billions of years old, when it really isn’t. (Here we go again! -EJB)
The Geological column and several key theories brought it about. And assumptions that places like the Grand Canyon take many many years to form. (And this is an interpretation, not fact. It’s never been proven.)
Our dating methods have been proven wrong a long time ago. Although, once evolution started leaking into mainstream media and everyone had started to accept that the earth is billions of years old, nobody dared question our modern-day methods except darwinists. (Not sure what the point was with this comment- EJB)
And now we’ve been repeatedly fed this bull crap about how the earth is billions of years old. We’re now looking upon every other theory as immediately dismissable.
Watch Kent Hovind’s creation series. You’ll find that the modern-day creationist views are ‘very’ different than ID. ID is still a way for humanists who don’t believe in a God but also don’t find evolution a very reliable theory to explain life. Ex: There was a designer, but it’s never showed itself to us. (This guy is hard-core so of course you can’t trust humanists -EJB)
You can believe whatever you want, all I’m saying is that evolution is an interpretation of the FACTS. Grand Canyon existing is a FACT. That it was created over millions or billions of years is THEORY. It cannot be observed so it cannot be proven.
In short: Show a little more respect to another person’s beliefs. Just because you believe in evolution doesn’t mean you’ve come along more intellectually.
Oh, and Kent Hovind’s website: http://www.drdino.com
(One of Hovind’s articles is titled “The Grand Canyon, Things That Make Evolutionists Look Stupid,” see name calling is not relegated solely to intellectuals -EJB)
My Response:
“There is no darkness but ignorance” and this is especially evident when religious zealots talk about scientific observation. You realize that with the advent of laser and computer technology and now through GPS, we can actually measure mountains rising and tectonic plates spreading apart, right? Or don’t they teach these scientific facts in your religious compound? (Okay, I was being bitchy but these denials are so hard to take early in the morning!)
For example, the massive Indo-Australian plate is still moving at 67 mm or for you metric phobes, about 3 inches a year. That very same plate is still pushing up the Himalaya Mountains. So do the math and by multiplying by millions of years, and use a calculator if you must, to see how the earth is constantly changing over time. So don’t give me that crap we haven’t seen it. You might as well argue that the GPS in your car doesn’t work while you are it. Speaking of which, I didn’t see my car being built but it’s a pretty safe assumption it was built by Americans in a U.S. factory (?) and not by angels in heaven (hopefully not by devils but that could explain a lot!) And yes, I do buy American!
Religious zealots chose to conveniently ignore the facts and look for weakness along the fringes of science hoping beyond hope to see some personal glimpse of God. Albert Einstein tried to do the same and he failed miserably by the way so I don’t think you’re going to fare much better. That’s why we call it faith by the way. And faith is fine but don’t tell me you have the right to teach this ignorance in a public school. It’s important to separate the teaching of science from the preaching of faith and you just have to look to the Taliban to see where religious ignorance will lead you.
Oh, as to the link to that Creationist site look if you must for a needed laugh but it’s more of the usual Creationist denial and crapfest material. I like the negative article about the chickenosaurus, which is an attempt by biologists to turn genes on and off to recreate a ancestral dinosaur from it’s descendant: a common everyday chicken. For example, they have been able to grow teeth in chicken embryos which is pretty impressive by playing around with a few genes. As to the ethics of doing this, well that is another matter. Here’s a better link:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2009/03/10/will-jurassic-park-ever-really-come-true/
Finally, as to the state of my intellectual development, well I am reminded of an old Archie Bunk quip when Meathead commented to Archie about how Archie should be wanting more for his children. To paraphrase Archie’s comment he said “didn’t the gorilla parent want more for his children but there they are, still a gorilla.” I have accepted that there is so much we don’t know and more importantly, in our present physical manifestations as human beings, so much we will never know. In short, I have embraced uncertainty unlike my creationist fundamentalist friends and any supposed intellectual superiority on my part melts away upon personal introspection and a simple gaze at the night skies.
Erik John Bertel
Where to begin? Okay I decided, let’s go with the religious backlash comment. Since Kain sounds so old school and is such a true believer maybe we could go with some old, school Taliban style backlash? You know, we out number you so we can round up the heretics and burn them at the stake because they dare question what we the true believers know? That’s what “retarded” fundamentalist religion does to you, it keeps locked you safely in a box until the real world comes knocking at your door, like the wackos in Texas.
What you don’t get with all your huffing and puffing is that science will let you teach ID in a school the day ID becomes a verifiable and working hypothesis, until then it is a matter of faith and conjecture not fitting for scientific study. Do we ask you to teach evolution during your bible studies? You are so damn afraid your kids might think for themselves one day that you will do anything to repress the facts including the existence of the fossil record. If you win on this issue what’s next? Are you going to go back to the earth being at the center of the universe?
So for now let’s address this Christian fundamentalist religious intolerance you are so enamored with. I know Ben Stein and the gang want to blame Darwin and science for the holocaust but that doesn’t address centuries of pogroms against the Jews prior to the existence of Darwin now does it? No, but you know what does? Religious intolerance, in fact, intolerant religions have killed more people than any other cause in the history of mankind and science only helps the wackos to kill more efficiently.
Finally, explain for me how ID doesn’t interfere with the concept of free will if you can? I have yet to hear a plausible explanation for how god directs the evolutionary direction of all living creatures even to this day but doesn’t see fit to get involved with saving the Jews during the Holocaust or the flood victims in Burma. Mighty strange priorities for the almighty if you ask me and one can only conclude that that thread of fundamentalist thinking is both simplistic and hopelessly erroneous.
Erik John Bertel
Kain wasn’t done:
“Wow. Are you seriously this misinformed? 1st off, my comment about the backlash was simply that Rush’s audience outnumbers you at least 2-1 and in a democratic society it’s not good to piss off the majority so yes the best way to educate people to your side of the argument is by true debate in the classroom and not Nazi style exclusion because the latter may end up biting you in the ass when the majority decides to use the same against you and believe me we don’t want our school system to be systems of theocracy. Also, comparing every religious person to the “wackos” in TX is the equivalent of me saying all atheists are the equavalent of Stalin or Mao.
2nd, ambiogenesis isn’t a “verifiable working” anything. It is a hypothesis to the origin of life and nothing more AS IS ID and ambiogenesis is a matter of FAITH for those who have none in a 3rd party (including a god). Also you are making the same ignorant assumptions that we all have a problem with evolution or the fossil record. We all don’t. Evolution describes a natural process that goes on all the time around us. It does not describe the origin of life.
I think your rant pretty much tips your hand on why you are angry with ID. You are intolerant to religions and broadbrush everyone as fundamentalist Christians (which I am not thank you) and see anything that MIGHT challenge your religion of materialism as a threat and you are too closed minded to admit it. Not that it matters, but materialism definitely ranks up there on the “killed more people” list and I would argue that anyone who killed en masse in the name of Christianity was actually following materialism and greed as the Christian religion does NOT advocate violence (i.e. you can’t be a true Christian if you’re acting contrary to the teachings so the Christianity killed more people argument is a logical fallacy).
As for free will, that’s easy. DNA is a source code and was deposited here by a 3rd party to evolve on it’s own. The 3rd party does not interfere in “free will” of the creation. It would be no different than a programmer creating a highly resilient program and depositing it in a hostile environment to see if it could “survive.” Maybe that doesn’t jive with the fundamentalist notion of a Christian God you seem to have but it works quite well for a number of theists. Your questions about god and suffering can easily be answered in any theology 101 course. Regardless, ID supporters are not actively promoting a fundamentalist Christian God but rather the possibility of a 3rd party as being the genesis of life rather than dumb luck even IF that life was started somewhere else in the universe and arrived here by accident and the creator doesn’t know of our existence. ID does not equal the “almighty”. -Kain
My final retort:
Sorry, I’m not buying that there is no tie between the ID faction and religious fundamentalism, the facts speak otherwise. You may not want to be part of the fundamentalist agenda but that is like the brown shirts saying they had nothing to do with the rise of the Nazis. The ID movement is basically a Trojan horse for a whole line of discredited religious thinking. And, I remind you that this entire Nazi thread and all of the attendant outlandish commentary was started first by Ben Stein and the Expelled crowd in the movie.
Also, how and why you attach materialism or the origin of life to Darwinism and the theory evolution of life is beyond me as well. The theory of evolution and Darwinism does not address the origins of life. Moreover, this entire argument reminds me of the fourteen questions the Gautama Siddartha refused to answer and for evolutionists the creation of life is one of those unanswerable questions. Could that change? Of course, as our knowledge base grows I fully expect it to. Maybe we are of Martian origins as the idiot Dawkins was alluding to but that doesn’t mean all life in the universe has to originate in such a mystical or extraterrestrial manner.
The facts remains there is no proof for the ID credo and puh-lease don’t give me that tired old irreducible complexity negative argument. Finally, if a third party did all of the seeding and coding, what was that source code programmed to do, to live and evolve into devout followers? When I write code I usually have an agenda in mind, at least I try to, so what was the goal of the Intelligent creator? How far could such a creative force foresee into the future, I mean RNA and DNA coding takes you in a very specific direction and once again how does a preprogrammed agenda square with free will? I agree with you on one fact, this is theology 101 and consequently it and ID has no place in a science class. And by the way, I am Christian that recognizes when science ends and when my faith begins.
As to the will of the majority, I could give you the old Henrik Ibsen quote about the majority always being wrong, you know the old chestnut about Hitler being voted into office but frankly I am not even going to concede that point. After all, Expelled wasn’t exactly Ironman or Indiana Jones at the box office this spring and going forward Americans are going to have their hands full with other urgent matters after eight years of benign neglect by the Bush administration.
Erik John Bertel